SPACIOUS REFLECTION: We create an environment in which students can think deeply about questions of the good life and begin to discern their own calling: “...the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet,” in the words of Frederick Buechner. 

NATURE IMMERSION: We encourage students to connect to nature as a source of grounding, contemplation, insight and joy. Students live on campus here in the coastal woodlands of Maine. They learn to identify trees and plants, hike the preserves, and camp on the Maine Island Trail. Students slow down, sync up with nature and come to recognize their reciprocity with the earth.  

INSPIRED ACADEMICS: Our programs are saturated with ideas to live by. We create a retreat-like setting, alive with creative thinking, good books and lively discussion. Our professors guide students through reflective exercises, facilitated conversations and immersive experiences in a non-ideological, non-dogmatic way. All courses at Seguinland Institute bear college credit through our affiliation with UMaine Farmington. 

MINDFULNESS: We try to create a context in which students can cultivate the inner resources necessary for personal and community-oriented thriving. This includes daily mindfulness practice: the development of skills for calming and focusing the mind, knitting together fractured attention spans, and learning to sit with mystery. 

CREATIVE ARTS: Creativity is the lifeblood of human thriving–for individuals and communities. Too many believe that creativity is the domain of the select few, “the artists”. We create space for all students to explore and expand their innate capacities for creative expression.  

BACK TO THE LAND: Our campus is on the site of an old family homestead. In this spirit, we grow some of our own food and try “to live sanely and simply in a troubled world,” to quote Helen & Scott Nearing. We encourage students to grapple with the interconnections between the good life and the food life, as so many pressing issues of our time are food-related: climate change, health, inequality.

THE GOOD LIFE FOR ALL: Questions of the good life for one are inseparable from questions of the good life for all. We encourage our students to recognize that their own well-being is tied up with that of everyone else’s. We seek to instill in our students the skills to build strong and inclusive communities in the 21st Century.

The virtual, non-residential component of the program (February - April) will entail weekly Zoom meetings, readings and experiential components. Our meetings will be dynamic and conversation-based. Students will be invited to shape this portion of the program. We will tailor the themes, readings and assignments to intersect with students interests, questions and ideas.

To mediate the distance, students will receive “Good Life Packages” in the mail with journals, readings and other goodies.

The Good Life Course, taught by Philip Francis, will be the wrap-around experience of the virtual component (see full course description further down the page). Woven between the more philosophical portions of the course will be:

1) a three-session course on Cultivating Mindfulness, taught by Ida Lennestal, Seguinland’s Director of Mindfulness;

2) a three-session course on finding your calling, choosing your next steps and living with a sense of purpose, taught by Matt Weeman, Director of Community Life at Seguinland.

We will meet 1-2 times per week for an hour and a half. We anticipate that some students will be participating in other activities (jobs, internships, etc) during this portion of our program. We’ll do our best to flex our meeting times around these other activities.

Between meetings, students will have assigned readings, experiences and journal prompts. Plan to dedicate 5-7-ish hours per week to this work. For students who want additional assignments, we are happy to accommodate!

Overview: In this three-week course we will explore the rich creative landscape at the confluence of writing and the outdoors. We’ll combine reflective study of craft with generative writing exercises and winter adventure. You do not need to identify as a writer to be successful in this course; you need only to come with an open mind and a set of questions that you’re hungry to explore through the prism of creative writing. See course details on the Wintering page.

Prof. Philip Francis, PhD

What counts as a good life? How do I go about living that good life? What will I do with my one wild and precious life? This course explores these questions by integrating readings and conversations with hands-on experiences in nature and adventures in homesteading. Throughout the course students are guided through a process of articulating their values & visions of the good life while reading the best of American nature writing.

This virtual course will entail weekly Zoom meetings, readings and experiential components. Our meetings will be dynamic and conversation-based. To mediate the distance, students will receive “Good Life Packages” in the mail with journals, readings and other goodies.

Prof. Philip Francis, PhD & Prof. Marsha Dunn, MSW

This interdisciplinary, experiential course is rooted in the contemporary moment, in a season ripe for exploration of community-building and ways of belonging. Through the dual lens of art and food studies, we will explore the sources of community upbuilding and the nature of our desire for belonging. We will learn from poet-farmers, artist-foragers, community-change-agents and philosophers of belonging. We will get our hands dirty in the garden and in the art studio. Themes will include: immersive art, radical hospitality, farm-centered communities, food justice, utopianism and hope. The course will culminate in the creation of an immersive, participatory, celebratory and sumptuous art-food installation - a feast for the eyes and the belly. Multi-media “journaling” will provide space to weave connections between community and its role in your Good Life.